Malihabad: He prefers calling himself a ‘cipher’ though he has been conferred upon a Padma Shri besides a host of national and international honours. The ‘zero’ milestone in Malihabad is the landmark of his unique mango orchard. And, it was a duck that drove him to meddle with mangoes. Cipher, it seems, is connected with Haji Kaleem Ullah Khan, the father of mango grafting.

“I scored zero in English following which I left school and developed interest in mangoes,” he said. So, he randomly picked up seven varieties of mango saplings for grafting. In three years, the experiment yielded mangoes of seven flavours on a single tree.

Five decades of passion delivered five new varieties of mangoes and a number of mango trees bearing fruits of different flavours, shapes, sizes and aroma. The best one is a mango tree having 357 varieties of mangoes. …

If you don’t want to be deemed deadwood or fumble with your mathematics, carry an abacus.

Abacus? Why? Because you’d have a lot of counting to do— 700 different varieties of mangoes; 300 varieties on one tree; countless orchards; riches multiplying at the auction, the innumerable nails hammered on planks to make mango boxes.

If you want to dig into history, perhaps that’s where you would need the abacus the most.

For most of Malihabad was seeded centuries ago by an Afghan, Afridi Fakir Mohammad Khan Sahib Goya, who married 11 times and had 52 children.

And when an impetuous history buff started rattling off the names, I was serene till count six, edgy by name 11, and much before he reached Child No. 20, I was puffing and bordering on the impolite.

Even my abacus looked infuriated and completely bushed. When there was silence, I ca…

Majestic Malihabad (one of the three tehsils of Lucknow district, UP), known all over the world for the marvellous mangoes it produces and for the great Urdu poetPadmabhushan Josh Malihabadi (ne Shabbeer Hasan Khan Afridi)(1898-1982) it gave birth to, is a land of legends, both of yore as well as living.

Apart from Josh, who became a living legend in his own life, Malihabad produced the first Indian to reachWimbledon’s quarter-finals in 1939, PadmashriGhaus Muhammad Khan Afridi (1915-1982).

Another illustrious son of Malihabad was Wali Kamaal Khan Afridi ‘Aarif Adeeb’ (1916-2003), a genius par excellence. The life of this great philosopher, who was a reservoir of wisdom and knowledge, was a unique spiritual journey in search of the ultimate truth.

Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD) has started a mango plantation aimed at generating no less than $15 million yearly. The mango plantation, which started last year has five mango species of 500,000 mangoes on the farm.

Speaking at the inauguration of a bridge that leads to the plantation, Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, commended the agric initiative and reiterated the commitment of his administration to generating at least 50 per cent of its Internally Generated Revenue from the sector, adding that the Afe Babalola initiative is worth emulating.

Dr. Fayemi said the recently launched Youth Commercial Agriculture Development programme was aimed at repositioning the state as the food basket of the Southwest as well as generating employment for the unemployed, but creative youths in the state.

He said the effort of Babalola in committing such resources to the development of the state is laudable, describing it as “an uncommon commitment …